UbiSoft require that you must have a net connection to play games...

[Kasatka]

I think problem with referencing developers is that it's more the publishers that are having hissy fits and yelling at everyone.
Electronics Arts are a prime example of a money grabbing company that doesn't really care about the titles in it's range as long as they make money.
Westwood made some awesome RTS in the form of the C&C franchise, they get bought out by EA and the franchise crashes, all of it's games from then on being mediocre.

Ultimately developers make games, they don't care what platform they are played on or what optional peripherals, net connections etc. are involved, as long as they make their game (sometimes they care about getting it done well, but that's a side point entirely) and get paid. It's their big brother/bully type figures in the form of the publishers that seem to dictate what is and isn't needed in a game, deadlines and platforms etc.

The whole industry is very much in the habit of passing the buck. Very hard to pin things like silly DRM or lack of fairly mandatory multiplayer features on any one party.

 

[BiG D]

It's not cool to hate on EA anymore, didn't you get the memo? Activision is who you're looking for.

 

[PsiSoldier]

It's not cool to hate on EA anymore, didn't you get the memo? Activision is who you're looking for.

I agree with this (Not to say EA hating isn't still justified).

Also, Blizzard.

 

[Haven]

I've read through the comments *phew* and noticed there's not a single mention of "mods" in the whole thread. Given thats essentially where this community came from (Natural Selection -> CS -> TeamFortress (original) as well as various Battlefield related mods) it definately deserves mention as it will keep the pc gaming community going a long time all by itself.

As Ronin has already said, who cares what developers do with their games if you're not actually interested in playing them. On the flip side if you are interested then you'll probably overlook the net requirement if you're interested enough or just steer clear to voice your discontent.

Anyway what I wanted to say is that the mod community is alive and kicking, go look out what is happening for your favorite game engine and play something for free!

On a sillly note; I'm pretty sure MUDS and MUSHES will also always be free - but they definately require an always on internet connection

 

[thatbloke]

The problem with mods is that while they may increase the replay value or lifetime of a game, they do not necessarily mean more money for a developer.

Off the top of my head I cannot think of a single current-gen console game that includes some kind of modding capability (aside from Little Big Planet, which is more of a level creator than a modding tool i guess), even though all consoles are entirely capable of being able to do so.

Maybe if they released a game, then, perhaps, for a small amount, they could offer a suite of modding tools on top, this would then increase the life of a game and I know there would be people out there that could come up with some amazing stuff - remember the desert combat mod for BF1942? It put that game on the map, bigtime. Perhaps some of these more mediocre games could be turned into something more special with the help of some of the people who know better than anyone what they want - the players themselves.

 

[Ronin Storm]

The problem with mods is that while they may increase the replay value or lifetime of a game, they do not necessarily mean more money for a developer.

What it does do, however, is make a game interesting as a platform rather than a game itself. For example, I was never particularly interested in UT2004 as a game, but as a platform for Alien Swarm (and Red Orchestra, and other mods) it was an excellent buy.

ArmA2 is another good example of that sort of thinking. Personally, I hate their single player missions, but their mission editor and the ACE2 extension is really what the game is about. Sudden, a game that felt a bit crap turned into a completely extensible and customisable platform for fun mil-sim.

I think it's perfectly legitimate for developers to create platforms for others to build on. After all, it's content depth that really kills a development shop, but user created content is "free" and done for the love of it. And, when it comes to it, isn't that sort of customisation what the hardcore PC gamer really wants?

 

[thatbloke]

... And, when it comes to it, isn't that sort of customisation what the hardcore PC gamer really wants?

And with all this movement to p2p hosted games and console->PC ports instead of the other way round and always on net connections, and the removal of various aspects that allow, encourage, and foster modding as a whole, what's left for us other than "Generic shooter XXXVII"?

 

[Ronin Storm]

And with all this movement to [stuff we don't want]

But where is it happening to games we actually want to play?

Not like we're looking at MW2 and thinking "hey, if only...". We knew well in advance that it was neutered in all the customisation lines we're actually interested in so it was always going to be a quick single player flash in the pan and then gone again. I didn't even bother buying/playing it, though I might see if I can borrow or rent it for the X360 at some point. After all, console games for the console, no?

It's not like WoW or EVE are about to go all P2P. Okay, DoW2 has a P2P mechanism and that does provide some issues but it sort of works and, besides, a tiny bit of latency doesn't hurt an RTS as much as it does a FPS.

I'm not saying that this problem isn't hurting games we want, just that I can't see any that I want that'll be affected.

 

[thatbloke]

But where is it happening to games we actually want to play?

Not like we're looking at MW2 and thinking "hey, if only...". We knew well in advance that it was neutered in all the customisation lines we're actually interested in so it was always going to be a quick single player flash in the pan and then gone again. I didn't even bother buying/playing it, though I might see if I can borrow or rent it for the X360 at some point. After all, console games for the console, no?

It's not like WoW or EVE are about to go all P2P. Okay, DoW2 has a P2P mechanism and that does provide some issues but it sort of works and, besides, a tiny bit of latency doesn't hurt an RTS as much as it does a FPS.

I'm not saying that this problem isn't hurting games we want, just that I can't see any that I want that'll be affected.

I was actually quite interested in Settlers 7 myself, one of the ultimate single player experiences IMO and this has all wrecked it for me.

In the specific cockup that was MW2, we only knew about 4-6 weeks in advance of its release that MW2 would have no modding support and no dedi server support, so I wouldn't say we "knew for a long time".

all this crap is starting to quite royally piss me off because the PC as a gaming platform is starting to change, and I'm not sure I'm liking the direction it's heading in.

 

[Kasatka]

Oh sweet baby jesus i didn't realise how much of a wall of text this was till i was finished, so i apologise in [edited] advance!

Modding is a massive thing for me. As a kid i fell in with the geeks at school and we all played various Half Life 1 mods. Now for us, the advent of Steam was an evil portent of the end of online gaming. Look at how popular steam is now?

As for PC as changing platform, i still always laugh at Lucas Arts excuse for not releasing Force Unleashed on all platforms, only to 2 years later turn around and do so. Here's a little extract from an old press release:

"“The PC being the gaming platform that it is, someone with a $4,000 high-end system would definitely be able to play the Euphoria, the DMM and really technical elements of the game. But someone with a low-end PC would have a watered down experience, they would have to turn all the settings down and it wouldn’t be the same game,” Suey said.

One might ask why not give the PC version a more scaled down version of the game so that it would reach a wider install base, well Suey says that would not be taking advantage of what the $4,000 rigs can do, so “it’s going to be not as good or only for a select few people.”

Obviously nobody at Lucas Arts considered that the differences between the Wii, 360 and PS3 were so huge that if they released a sort of "combined" code version for PC, with some graphics options, it'd work fine.

Oh that and Crysis... who sat down and played Crysis when it first came out and moaned about a "watered down experience cause their settings were on low". Some games will always sell well if marketed as basically just stress test/tech demos for the latest systems and technologies.

I think ultimately developers are just becoming lazier. And as the gaming industries swells and becomes bigger than nearly any other media sector, the volatile climate means smaller or less experimental developers are just being consolidated and bought out and we're ending up with so called 'super-publishers' the likes of EA and Activision with only a few mountainous independent developers left like Blizzard and Rockstar.

The second i hear a whiff of Bioware merging or being completely bought out, i'm pretty much quitting gaming

 

[Haven]

all this crap is starting to quite royally piss me off because the PC as a gaming platform is starting to change, and I'm not sure I'm liking the direction it's heading in.

The big white elephant in the room is multi-player mobile gaming. Thats changing everything at the moment as developers look to titles that can run on that platform as well as the more traditional PC/Console platforms.

Change is good and never nearly as controlled as the big software houses would like it to be

Androidand Iphone is the next gaming platform thats going to change the direction of gaming - I for one am seriously looking forward to some Augmented Reality gaming in the future *runs around shooting the gremilns only he can see *

In short don't fear the change and lets hope that some of the future Android success makes it back onto the *nix platform

 

[Traxata]

we're ending up with so called 'super-publishers' the likes of EA and Activision with only a few mountainous independent developers left like Blizzard and Rockstar.

The second i hear a whiff of Bioware merging or being completely bought out, i'm pretty much quitting gaming

Blizzard and Activision had a merger, just so you know

Bioware (and 2K games and their various geographical offices) Have been listening to their customers on Bioshock, it was going to be originally released with SecuROM and after the pro's / con's were stated out by the masses on their forum, they patched it out. I imagine they'll be doing the same again with Bioshock 2, not that I've personally had a problem with it, you still have to go through the original SecuROM installation process connect to the internets and after it's installed, patch it to remove the SecuROM.

 

[Ronin Storm]

after the pro's / con's were stated out by the masses on their forum, they patched it out.

I have a suspicion that this had little to do with their decision. I suspect they always intended to remove the protection mechanism after release but that it was included as a zero-day protection. After all, consumers tend to go with the path of least resistance, and if that's to get their game on pre-order then they'll go with that; if it's on torrent for days or weeks before that then the developer/publisher can expect lesser launch revenue as a direct result.

That said, very few of these mechanisms actually stand up to their apparent purpose, making me wonder if they were at all effective. I assert that they must be at least a bit effective because licensing and implementing these security mechanisms is not cheap. For example, Macrovision sell code securing mechanisms but they price them on the turnover of the company they're selling to, so for companies such as EA and Activision the price tag is probably in the many hundreds of thousands (given that for a tiny company I've seen a price in the mid tens of thousands for the same software).

If there's one thing these people (being the executives responsible for deciding to use DRM technologies) know how to do, it's how to count money. They wouldn't do it if it didn't make money or protect income. Doesn't make it any less irksome but it does mean that for all our complaints they are looking at their numbers and they know what it looks like before/after DRM.

 

[Kasatka]

I pre-ordered 4 copies of borderlands, but the DRM was a real bitch with them, ended up pretty much having to crack them, which kind of defied the point of legally buying it.

 

[thatbloke]

I pre-ordered 4 copies of borderlands, but the DRM was a real bitch with them, ended up pretty much having to crack them, which kind of defied the point of legally buying it.

I got it on Steam and never had an issue with it...

 

[Ronin Storm]

but the DRM was a real bitch with them

That sucks. Did you build your own machine?

I'm wondering whether stock machines (e.g. ones from Dell or PC World or whatever) are more likely to work with DRM due to being more likely to contain components that the various DRM schemes have been tested with.

 

[PsiSoldier]

[offtopic]
On the subject of buying games on Steam to avoid DRM problems. Why the hell are the prices on Steam so high compared to 'normal' stores, which give you an actual, physical, copy of the game. Defeats the purpose of digital distribution imo.

Also. Napoleon: Total War Imperial Edition for the same price as the standard edition on Steam. lolwut
[/offtopic]

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

[offtopic]
On the subject of buying games on Steam to avoid DRM problems. Why the hell are the prices on Steam so high compared to 'normal' stores, which give you an actual, physical, copy of the game. Defeats the purpose of digital distribution imo.
[/offtopic]

Its insurance incase your house burns down.

 

[BiG D]

It's retail establishments putting pressure on publishers, pure and simple.

 

[Kasatka]

That sucks. Did you build your own machine?

I'm wondering whether stock machines (e.g. ones from Dell or PC World or whatever) are more likely to work with DRM due to being more likely to contain components that the various DRM schemes have been tested with.

This is the only machine i haven't ever custom built actually. My friend had issues with his that was custom built, another friend didn't with his that was custom built and my 3rd friend hasn't let me know whether he had issues yet.

DRM is just the laziest, most bug proof way of fighting revenue loss.